Leaving Urth

By Michael Faso

So I’ve been interested in the whole Heaven’s Gate cult situation, which happened in the mid-late ‘90’s. Typical weirdo cult. But they had a very interesting way they all killed themselves, it was a mass-suicide cult. They were leaving this universe. They all had a duffel bag and $5.33 in their pocket to get through the heaven toll. I don’t really know the specifics, but it was more the visuals of that that really got to me.

They all wore the same outfit in their suicide, which was sweatpants and a pair of Nike Decades. Which then probably looked a little weird. But now it’s fashion, like baggy sweatpants and new Nikes, you know? And they had a shiny purple shroud over all of them and there were bunk beds in a weird San Diego house. So that was crazy just visually. It’s fucked up, but they don’t even look like they are dead. Because all you see is legs. And it just looks comfortable. All black with a purple shine, sweatpants that are baggy, and Nikes that are brand new. So that was strange. The website is also really strange.

The fact that it’s still up. I mean, there’s definitely a fascination in my generation with Internet 1.0. And they’re for sure Internet 1.0, you know? It reminds me of when I first built websites. It was like, Geocities and Angelfire and these weird templates. You could get this subdomain, you have a little pop-up, but you can have a website, which is very iframe with the links that turn blue once you click it. So the whole thing about it was just so strange to me. But the purple is cool. I like the purple. I’ve always wanted to just flip it, because it’s so funny to me how “fashion” it is. Even though that was not on their radar at all. But at this point, it’s so fashion.

So I wanted to make an extreme version of that. Like, oh you want fashion? It’s super glammed out. I also wanted to play on LA. I’m from here, I’m from the valley, and a lot of LA stuff is really funny to me. I participate in it, but it’s like, the juices and the Urth Café, the Erewhon and the beach and the Taco Truck. It’s crazy! Especially if you’re kind of from here, and you see the people that aren’t who come and want to go, it’s like such a stereotype. It’s fun to participate. But it’s also fun to make fun of it.